Chains
by Magi Silverwolf
Summary: Harry rescues Sirius but this time, it's for himself, not Dumbledore. (HC fill; MC4A fill)


**Disclaimer:** I do not own the original canon nor am I making any profit from writing this piece. All works are accredited to their original authors, performers, and producers while this piece is mine. No copyright infringement is intended. I acknowledge that all views and opinions expressed herein are merely my interpretations of the characters and situations found within the original canon and may not reflect the views and opinions of the original author(s), producer(s), and/or other people.

 **Warnings:** This story may contain material that is not suitable for all audiences and may offend some readers. Please exercise understanding of personal boundaries before and during reading.

 **Author's Note (Things to Know):** _Xanadu_ is a fancy-pants name for gray-green (emphasis on the gray). It is also an awesome musical about the Muses. (Yes, the soundtrack has been playing practically all round.); there is never a justifiable reason to leave a child in a known abusive household without, at _absolute minimum_ , oversight.

 **Author's Note(s):** Has anyone ever wondered why Lily—the person who was likely to have _actually_ vanquished Voldemort the first time—wasn't mentioned very much? Or how about why "everyone" knows what happened that night when the only surviving witnesses were a wraith and a toddler? What do these questions have to do with this piece? Possibly nothing. Possibly _everything_.

 **Notice:** This story was previously published in a collection in which it did not belong. It is now being published as a standalone story with all competition-centric notes not in the Block removed.

 **Challenge/Competition Block** :  
 **Stacked with:** Houses Competition (Term 3); Paranormal Phantasm; Lessons Learned; Not Commonwealth; Sky's the Limit; Terms of Service; By Any Other Name; Fem Power Challenge; Gryffindor MC  
 **House** : Hufflepuff  
 **Year:** 6th  
 **Category:** Bonus (1000 – 3000 words)  
 **Prompts:** Escape (theme); Xanadu (color); "If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals." - Sirius Black (quotation)  
 **Representation:** Magic; Hogwarts; Harry Potter; Implied Wolfstar; Hero; Found Family; Hermione Granger  
 **Bonus Challenge(s):** Casper's House; Creature Feature; Second Verse (Not a Lamp; Ladylike - Aggressive; Mouth of Babes; Non-traditional; Found Family; Wabi Sabi; Middle Name; Nightingale; Tomorrow's Shade; Unwanted Advice; Some Beach); Second Verse (Zucchini Bread; Misshapen Pods; Hot Apple; Mermaid; Sitting Hummingbird; Uncivil Obedience)  
 **Word Count** : 2106

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 **Defiance**  
Chains  
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"We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice; we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself." – Dietrich Bonhoeffer  
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Hermione had been very clear about what she had been told about the use of the Time-Turner. They wouldn't be allowed to change anything; they mustn't be seen. _Terrible things happen to wizards who meddle with time_ , she had recited dutifully. _People have accidentally killed themselves trying_. Hermione was always knowledgeable about the rules of things and always willing to share her knowledge. Hermione _cared_ , and so very much, which Harry had always admired about her.

She also listened to authority figures to the exclusion of common sense. She excused behavior that she had to know would _never_ be acceptable. And then, she turned around and encouraged the same kind of behavior. Harry had always gone along with it in the past. Hermione and Ron were his best friends and his first friends ever. Anything that had kept them by his side would be acceptable to him.

But this time it was simply too much, not on top of everything else he had learned this year, not on top of the questions that he had been collecting.

He would have to sacrifice his carefully crafted cover as an average student—and to more than simply Hermione—and it would definitely take the kind of sly manipulations that had kept him _alive_ at the Dursleys, but _this_ couldn't be allowed to play out the way the headmaster clearly wanted. Harry had the feeling that if he followed the plan that Dumbledore had hinted at, his godfather would spend the rest of his life on the run for a crime that not only had he not committed but for which he had never even been tried.

Yes, Harry had a selfish reason for his impending defiance, because if Sirius was freed, there was no way Harry would be forced to return to the Dursleys.

But there was still something inherently _evil_ about the injustice of locking defenseless people up with creatures like _dementors_ and especially when those people had committed no crime.

 _Silence in the face of evil is in itself evil._

Harry had managed to get Hermione on his side with that piece of wisdom. She had still looked conflicted when he had left her in Hagrid's hut. Her face had barely been darker than Buckbeak's xanadu-colored feathers, easily comparable due to the hippogriff's presence right behind her. He hadn't hesitated to leave her there as he charged into the night to save Sirius for the first time.

It had ached, concluding that his father really couldn't have been the one to save him and Sirius from the swarm of dementors the first time through the night, but that had hurt less than the idea that his father had somehow survived and had chosen to abandon him to the Dursleys. Only after the time travel aspect had entered the equation had Harry truly began to that it had to have been _himself_ that he had seen alight with the glow of a corporeal Patronus.

If he had the power to save himself and Sirius _then_ , he should also have the ability to save them in a more permanent fashion.

He doubted he would get lucky enough to catch a certain unfaithful _rat_ , which was something that he was trying very hard to _not_ contemplate too much at the moment. Ron had slept with Scabbers; Hermione had often brought him back from the girls' dorms. Both of those things would have been normal- _ish_ for a pet, but with the revelation that Scabbers had been a man the whole time, they took on a suspicious air, just as disturbing (if for different reasons) as the head of the judicial body for the country deciding that the only way to save a man he believes to be innocent from an unjust death was not to use his own substantial political clot but to send two teens to break laws that could accidentally kill them from the potential magical backlash.

Not to mention that there was a werewolf freely roaming the very grounds said teens had to be out on to do _anything_ about the situation at all. This was really just a repeat of allowing a man possessed by the Dark Lord to stay around children for an entire year and somehow _not_ interviewing the ghost of the victim from the first time the Chamber had been opened. There was so many things that Dumbledore had done that had put the students at risk needlessly that Harry was surprised that there hadn't been any deaths yet.

 _Not to act is to act._

It had hurt more than Harry had expected to see the silvery creature charging across the lake, even as it had confused him. He had heard the rumors about what his Patronus had looked like when he had set it upon Malfoy and his bookends. Everyone had agreed that it had been a stag with a magnificent set of antlers. The creature that had come from his wand, that had mercilessly stomped the dementors to the ground instead merely chasing them away, that had so gently tugged at the loose fabric of his robes before fading from brilliant white to sad xanadu before disappearing completely—that creature was most definitely _not a stag_.

It was a doe, defiant and fierce and so, _so_ similar to the heat that always protected him at the Dursleys when things were at their worst.

It wasn't bravery that it left behind in him.

It was protective determination, like _nothing_ —not chance or destiny or fate—could hinder him in his self-appointed mission.

Holding the memory of that feeling close, Harry had forced himself to walk away from the now-sleeping pair on the beach. It wasn't time for the final pieces to fall into place. Despite the plan to _change_ the past, it could only be done in certain ways. Harry had no desire to kill himself, accidentally or otherwise, and even less to destroy the world. It would be less than forty-five minutes before the next part of his improvised plan could be enacted; he could wait.

Hermione had seen him and Buckbeak off with a sharp nod and another tight hug before running back into the castle, making her way by foot to the hidden stairway just down the corridor from the Hospital Wing. Harry felt a pang of longing to have kept her closer for this part, but he did understand her reasoning. She had always been even less a fan of heights than she had of outright defying authority figures. Flying on Buckbeak was just as grand as it had been the first time at the start of the year. In fact, it was better because now he knew that he was to finally close to being free from the Dursleys as well as the headmaster who was incompetent at best and disturbingly manipulative otherwise.

Sirius had been exactly where the headmaster had said, which shouldn't have surprised Harry nearly as much as it did. The window had opened easily under Harry's charm and wasn't that just the norm? Despite how commonly known the first-year charm was, it seemed like it was habit to secure things under charms that could be bypassed with it, if the headmaster wanted children involved.

"How— _how_ —" Sirius seemed stuck on that as he stared at Buckbeak. Harry gripped the xanadu-colored crest feathers to encourage the hippogriff into a better angle for the emancipated man to climb onto from the window.

"Get _on_ ," Harry commanded, "and hurry, we don't have much time. Macnair has left to collect a dementor. So unless you want your next kiss to be rather scaly and final, get moving."

" _Bossy_ ," Sirius commented as he obeyed. His arms were shaking as they wrapped around Harry, but it could have just as easily been from cold as aftereffects of the dementors. His voice was thick as he continued. "You may look like James, but the bossiness? That's your mother through and through. That woman could have gotten the mountains to move just by raising an eyebrow at them."

The babbling fell off as Harry encouraged Buckbeak to take them to the roof of the West Tower. The hippogriff landed with a scrabble of claws and hooves against the battlements but settled quickly. Just as nimbly, Harry slid from his back. To keep the winged creature from flying off immediately, he kept a hand resting on the xanadu feathers on Buckbeak's neck. Restless, the hippogriff pawed the ancient stone, eager to be away from the castle.

"Listen, Sirius," Harry said urgently. "Any moment now, they'll see that you aren't in Flitwick's office." He took a deep breath, tapping into the well of determination to color his words. "You cannot stay and this is important, you _cannot_ trust the headmaster."

"Your mother said that a lot, too," Sirius commented, like he couldn't help it. Harry nodded in acknowledgement and continued without saying anything.

"He knows that you're innocent, and his great plan for stopping your execution was to send me and Hermione back in time to save you."

"But he's Chief Warlock, I thought? And Supreme Mugwump of the ICW—he could—"

"Yes, I _know_ ," Harry interrupted, keenly aware that he was running out of time to rehash how a man with Dumbledore's political clot could have easily overruled the Minister's decree. "Listen, you have to _go_ and ask for, I don't know, sanctuary or asylum somewhere that you can be safe and get the trial that you need. You aren't going to get it here and you'll only be in danger." Harry's breath hitched. "I can't lose you, too, not when I've just got you back."

"Come with me," Sirius pleaded. He leaned forward to place his hand on the one Harry still had on Buckbeak's neck. "We can both go."

"If I did," Harry said, ignoring the way his heart lurched at the idea of being so wanted by a family member, "they would treat it like a kidnapping and even Dumbledore would likely not give you any mercy." It didn't matter that Sirius was his rightful guardian, and they both knew it. Dumbledore had an agenda and while Harry didn't know what it was yet, he knew that it involved keeping him at the Dursleys for as long as possible. Maybe he just wanted to remind Harry of his _place_ , so that Harry wouldn't question what was going on too much. After all, look what had happened in this just these few hours when Harry had a chance to do just that. "You have to go, and _alone_ , and get your charges cleared before we can be together."

"How is it that you look so much like James," Sirius asked, once more using that distant inflection that made it seem like he wasn't meaning to speak aloud, "but you are such a copy of Lily?"

"Just lucky, I guess," Harry quipped. Sirius blinked, as if realizing that he hadn't been dreaming. Buckbeak shifted again. "Go now, Sirius, before you can't."

"I'm coming back for you, Prongslet," Sirius promised, leaning back in preparation of taking off again. "Once I'm finally free, _nothing_ is gonna keep us apart, not even someone with as many high offices as Albus Dumbledore. We'll be a family, just the two of us—and Remus, too, because I love the man, but Magic knows that he will forget to take care of himself if not dragged away from his books every once in a while."

"I'm holding you to that promise."

"Your parents would have been so proud of the person you've become. I know I certainly am."

With those words, Sirius used his legs to nudge Buckbeak to the tower's edge. The hippogriff launched itself into the night sky with a defiant screech. Harry watched for only a moment before turning towards the stairwell that would be where Hermione was waiting for him. It was time to play the role which he had been assigned again.

Dumbledore believed Harry to be his inferior and _look_ at what happened to all those whom Dumbledore believed to be such.

Wouldn't he be surprised to find that Harry was breaking the chains that had bound him? Wouldn't he be surprised when Harry began acting as an equal instead?

Harry was actually looking forward to seeing the expression on the headmaster's face, even if it was the same petty enjoyment that came from insulting Dudley in ways that went over the boy's head.

He was _done_ speaking with silence.

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An Ending  
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End file.
